Talk:Transmutate (BW)
Gender
[edit]Transmutate doesn't HAVE a gender, I thought. Don't they ALWAYS refer to it as, well, "it"? (Plus this article totally needs to be put in the character format.) --M Sipher 05:17, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Meh. I dunno. I thought basically everybody thought of Transmutate as female. If that's not accurate, I certainly don't object to having that category removed. --Steve-o 05:29, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, being voiced by Susan Blu certainly colored that. But I don't remember it ever having been referred to with a gendered pronoun in the actual episode itself... which I would think is PART of the point. It's such a freak it doesn't even fall under "he" or "she". --M Sipher 05:33, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Didn't one of the Bobs say Transmutate was female? And ALL TF's are neither male nor female according to the Marvel comics. What's so freaky about asexuality? Silverbolt putting his boy-parts in Blackarachnia's spider-parts-- now that's freaky! -Derik 06:42, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
- Did one of the Bobs say it in the actual episode? /:) Also, this is not the Marvel comics. This is Beast Wars, where there are males and females. --ItsWalky 06:52, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
- To what degree are we confined to 'said in the actual episode'? Female voice actor. Nothign in the episode conflicts with it, producer says it's so- doesn't this get an italicised comment at least? (But then, I never understood the screaming shit-fits some people get into when you say the Predacon ship was called the Darkside. It was named in official sources, jsut not the series. Make an italicised note that the name came later and move on. No one gets this upset abotu the name of the Ark, and we didnt' even have Terrorsaur for that!) -Derik 07:46, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
A minor point of argument among fans is exactly why the Maximals were so quick to stasis-lock Transmutate instead of transferring its spark to another body like Rhinox did with Optimus Primal following the latter's unintentional sacrifice.
- With Primal they were able to transfer his Spark into a new body because they happened to have a new empty stasis pod land outside soon before. With Transmutate, they didn't transfer her Spark because they didn't have any spare protoforms lying around (unless they found some and I'm forgetting it)--Zodberg 03:45, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
- Yeah, is this really a point of argument among fans? Because, it shouldn't be. The only reason they were able to put Primal's spark in a new body is because that pod with the blank protoform happened to be on hand. --KilMichaelMcC 04:15, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
- I'm inclined to agree. I vaguely recall people wondering why the Maxies seemed so eager to put her out of her misery instead of, say, stasis. But not that they should have given her a new body. --Steve-o 04:22, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
- But... they were going to put her into stasis. No one but Megatron ever suggested killing Transmutate. --KilMichaelMcC 04:24, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
- I'm inclined to agree. I vaguely recall people wondering why the Maxies seemed so eager to put her out of her misery instead of, say, stasis. But not that they should have given her a new body. --Steve-o 04:22, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
- Yeah, is this really a point of argument among fans? Because, it shouldn't be. The only reason they were able to put Primal's spark in a new body is because that pod with the blank protoform happened to be on hand. --KilMichaelMcC 04:15, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Fifteen years later with a new Generations toy bio using "she" and "her" for the show character and all subsequent ancillary media having gone for lady Transmutate in the interim is it time for us to revisit how we handle the gender situation in their intro? --AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 22:02, 23 February 2021 (EST)
- I am all for moving to female pronouns. Didn't the original episode script also describe them as big a female too? Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 22:26, 23 February 2021 (EST)
- The script uses "she/her," but in the episode every single character, every single time, uses "it/its." Those are the canonical cartoon pronouns. Our current intro and BW section somewhat clean that up by choosing "they/them," but... it's an episode about euthanizing the disabled, I'm not sure how much we can clean it or if we should even try. EDITED BECAUSE I JUST READ THE SCRIPT FOR THE FIRST TIME, it is rather more definitive than our 14-year-old summary at the end. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 22:52, 23 February 2021 (EST)
- That's true. However, BWU, Battle Tactics and two of the character's toys are sold as females at this point, so I'd say that is more than enough pieces of fiction to class them as "female". Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 22:59, 23 February 2021 (EST)
- My view is to make an exception for the cartoon section to use "it" (as ugly as that is), feminine pronouns everywhere else. Saix (talk) 11:17, 24 February 2021 (EST)
- I second Saix's proposal as probably the most accurate presentation of the facts of the case. AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 23:59, 25 February 2021 (EST)
- I agree. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 00:07, 26 February 2021 (EST)
- I second Saix's proposal as probably the most accurate presentation of the facts of the case. AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 23:59, 25 February 2021 (EST)
- My view is to make an exception for the cartoon section to use "it" (as ugly as that is), feminine pronouns everywhere else. Saix (talk) 11:17, 24 February 2021 (EST)
- That's true. However, BWU, Battle Tactics and two of the character's toys are sold as females at this point, so I'd say that is more than enough pieces of fiction to class them as "female". Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 22:59, 23 February 2021 (EST)
- The script uses "she/her," but in the episode every single character, every single time, uses "it/its." Those are the canonical cartoon pronouns. Our current intro and BW section somewhat clean that up by choosing "they/them," but... it's an episode about euthanizing the disabled, I'm not sure how much we can clean it or if we should even try. EDITED BECAUSE I JUST READ THE SCRIPT FOR THE FIRST TIME, it is rather more definitive than our 14-year-old summary at the end. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 22:52, 23 February 2021 (EST)
I'm chiming into this discussion just to fess up to adding Transmutate to the nonbinary characters category. I recognise this decision may be contested so I will justify it by adding that personal feelings about the use of it/its pronouns should not have bearing on the fact that - as has already been stated - in the final version of the script (which is the one relevant to canon) and in the episode it is always consistently referred to with 'it'. I myself am an autistic person who happens to use it/its, which has no bearing on my sapience or autonomy (I only bring up my identity to point out that real people do exist who use those pronouns; the usage of it/its by an autistic character is not inherently "ugly" or something that needs to be "cleaned up"). Silverbolt and Rampage both use 'it' while fully respecting and advocating for its autonomy. Transmutate's demonstration of its own sapience and the fact that it never once contested or objected to the use of neutral pronouns means that regardless of their portrayal in Uprising, there is no reason to assume that Beast Wars Transmutate is anything other than non-binary (possibly agender, but it is never actually stated to be genderless, so that would be speculation, not fact). Solus (talk) 09:17, 23 April 2023 (EDT)
- If a script differs from final published story, we always give precedence to the latter. Scripts change all the time and typically this winds up as curio in "Notes", if anything at all. The whole point of the episode was that most BW characters disputed not Transmutate's gender but its life. Megatron called it a "thing," Primal said it was "barely at the level of a drone", Rattrap called it an Erector Set. That set up the whole tragedy at the end. We categorize characters as non-binary who have some in-fiction confirmation of that, even if it's just Vector Prime declaring it decades later. Adding Transmutate would be a speculative retcon of our own creation and, in my opinion, changes the subject away from the core tension of the episode. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 09:49, 23 April 2023 (EDT)
- Apologies for my bluntness but TFwiki's criteria for the Non-binary category is, "characters whose gender does not simply fit a binary gender or aren't on a masculine-spectrum/feminine-spectrum gender binary at all". Beast Wars Transmutate falls into both of TFWiki's criteria: its gender "does not simply fit a binary gender" nor is it on the binary spectrum. The in-fiction confirmation is that it is not referred to within binary terms in-episode, and it *is* explicitly referred to with non-binary pronouns. 'It' is not a pronoun that 'simply fits a gender binary'. Calling Beast Wars Transmutate 'female' is far more of a retcon and assumption than calling it non-binary; at the very least its gender was never once specified in-show, putting it in the same category as Acid Storm (a gender variable/gender expansive character). Vector Prime actually hasn't ever used the word 'non-binary' (or variants thereof), we've reasonably inferred that Tigerhawk, Honk and Overlord are non-binary from the phrases AVP does use ('do not conform to a binary male/female state'). Earthspark Frenzy's gender has never been confirmed in-fiction and their voice actor is non-binary but TFWiki has inferred that Frenzy is female and added the page to the female characters category. Likewise, Transmutate's non-binaryness can be reasonably inferred from how the characters refer to it never in gendered terms or pronouns; it is explicitly outside of the binary in-fiction. This is different to characters who simply do not get a long enough appearance to be referred to with pronouns/gendered terms. Not having a gender is not fitting into a gender binary. Additionally, your opinion that it not being part of a gender binary would change the subject from the episode is subjective, this is not a criterion for TFWiki nor is it a criterion for the Transformers franchise. No other canon Non-binary character has ever had an episode where their gender was disputed or part of the episode's core tension, including Nightshade, the franchise's most prominent non-binary character, who has appeared in several episodes so far without their gender being the subject of any of them, so I do not see how that's relevant. Transmutate has as much in-fiction confirmation of it being non-binary as any other singular-episode guest character whose gender is not the point of the episode (e.g. Beta - we've put her in Female Transformers because she's referred to with she/her and drawn with a feminine figure. Transmutate is referred to as it/its and its character model is explicitly androgynous - this should be enough. If binary characters like Beta do not need to announce their gender in exact words neither should characters who are very obviously outside of the binary like Beast Wars Transmutate. To clarify, I do not think it is an unreasonable assumption to speculate that characters like Beta are female given the in-fiction evidence, but neither do I think it is unreasonable to do the same for Transmutate based upon the exact same evidence). If Transmutate should not be categorised as non-binary then TFwiki may need to revise its categorisation policies for characters such as ES Frenzy, Beta and others who have been placed in gendered categories based upon inference regarding their character models without canon confirmation, or perhaps create a new category for characters like Beast Wars Transmutate who do not fall into the gender binary but also have not used the words 'non-binary' - 'genderless characters' or 'gender unconfirmed characters'. Sorry again if any of this has come across as patronising, or if the length seems berating, that's genuinely not my intention. (Edited addendum even though this is much too long already lmao: It could also be helpful to have some concrete rule for what does and does not constitute in-fiction confirmation - i.e. why does AVP describing certain characters as gender non-conforming count as self-evident (I agree that it is) but Transmutate using non-binary pronouns, language, and being designed androgynously not count as self-evident in-fiction confirmation? I'm sure I'm not the only autistic TFWiki user who would appreciate some nice clear rules on this) Solus (talk) 13:36, 3 May 2023 (EDT)
- Hi Solus! Nice username by the way. :3 We thought we'd swing by to explain some things since we have spearheaded (with the help of a lot of people aside from being a plural system as is haha) gender categorization on the wiki and work on that stuff among other things when our mental health/work-life balance allows (there are some articles we are contemplating writing but haven't been able to yet but given all this attention and the upcoming movie we're going to go back to our drafts). So the thing with BW Trans-Mutate is that just because it has been assigned it/its/it's pronouns at protoforming and did not dispute them does not mean that it wanted them (we will add a note to this effect later). Enthusiastic consent/affirmation is really what would be needed for that. We fully recognize and are with you on the fact that this seems incongruous to male and female characters from a similar time-frame getting a free pass but the reason for that precisely is because of defaulting to writer intent when in-text information is not available. As such- and we must also demarcate that pronouns do not equal gender [which is something actually relevant to Transformers now in 2023 since Renegade Games stated on their discord that they avoided giving genders to bots to leave things open ended/up to players but did have pronoun variation and Anode and Lug referred to as each other's wives in the Core book (look we are behind on our edits we've kind of been through a lot since November and are still healing and for that we apologize)] further this would be an assigned nonbinary or intersex situation due to being a damaged protoform if we go through with what you're saying here, which we understand why you are, as someone who for different reasons headcanons Trans-Mutate(s) as trans and we ourselves are on the spectrum. However- we do not think it is fair to assume the intent of the writing was to do Trans-Mutate that way simply because at no point in the writing process or hearing about it has there been any hint of understanding that angle, and moreover the transformer's gender systems with binaries when present do not exactly revolve around the same things as the imperial western and/or hegemonic masculine binaries that violently enforces cisgender heterosexuality even if they have their own androcentric struggles. Airazor and Blackarachnia serve their sides with full combat roles at a time when that was uncommon in the West (and we will note that this far from a new thing in history for women to do but that's a tangent) and nobody was forced into assigned gender roles among the cast we saw onscreen.
- Apologies for my bluntness but TFwiki's criteria for the Non-binary category is, "characters whose gender does not simply fit a binary gender or aren't on a masculine-spectrum/feminine-spectrum gender binary at all". Beast Wars Transmutate falls into both of TFWiki's criteria: its gender "does not simply fit a binary gender" nor is it on the binary spectrum. The in-fiction confirmation is that it is not referred to within binary terms in-episode, and it *is* explicitly referred to with non-binary pronouns. 'It' is not a pronoun that 'simply fits a gender binary'. Calling Beast Wars Transmutate 'female' is far more of a retcon and assumption than calling it non-binary; at the very least its gender was never once specified in-show, putting it in the same category as Acid Storm (a gender variable/gender expansive character). Vector Prime actually hasn't ever used the word 'non-binary' (or variants thereof), we've reasonably inferred that Tigerhawk, Honk and Overlord are non-binary from the phrases AVP does use ('do not conform to a binary male/female state'). Earthspark Frenzy's gender has never been confirmed in-fiction and their voice actor is non-binary but TFWiki has inferred that Frenzy is female and added the page to the female characters category. Likewise, Transmutate's non-binaryness can be reasonably inferred from how the characters refer to it never in gendered terms or pronouns; it is explicitly outside of the binary in-fiction. This is different to characters who simply do not get a long enough appearance to be referred to with pronouns/gendered terms. Not having a gender is not fitting into a gender binary. Additionally, your opinion that it not being part of a gender binary would change the subject from the episode is subjective, this is not a criterion for TFWiki nor is it a criterion for the Transformers franchise. No other canon Non-binary character has ever had an episode where their gender was disputed or part of the episode's core tension, including Nightshade, the franchise's most prominent non-binary character, who has appeared in several episodes so far without their gender being the subject of any of them, so I do not see how that's relevant. Transmutate has as much in-fiction confirmation of it being non-binary as any other singular-episode guest character whose gender is not the point of the episode (e.g. Beta - we've put her in Female Transformers because she's referred to with she/her and drawn with a feminine figure. Transmutate is referred to as it/its and its character model is explicitly androgynous - this should be enough. If binary characters like Beta do not need to announce their gender in exact words neither should characters who are very obviously outside of the binary like Beast Wars Transmutate. To clarify, I do not think it is an unreasonable assumption to speculate that characters like Beta are female given the in-fiction evidence, but neither do I think it is unreasonable to do the same for Transmutate based upon the exact same evidence). If Transmutate should not be categorised as non-binary then TFwiki may need to revise its categorisation policies for characters such as ES Frenzy, Beta and others who have been placed in gendered categories based upon inference regarding their character models without canon confirmation, or perhaps create a new category for characters like Beast Wars Transmutate who do not fall into the gender binary but also have not used the words 'non-binary' - 'genderless characters' or 'gender unconfirmed characters'. Sorry again if any of this has come across as patronising, or if the length seems berating, that's genuinely not my intention. (Edited addendum even though this is much too long already lmao: It could also be helpful to have some concrete rule for what does and does not constitute in-fiction confirmation - i.e. why does AVP describing certain characters as gender non-conforming count as self-evident (I agree that it is) but Transmutate using non-binary pronouns, language, and being designed androgynously not count as self-evident in-fiction confirmation? I'm sure I'm not the only autistic TFWiki user who would appreciate some nice clear rules on this) Solus (talk) 13:36, 3 May 2023 (EDT)
- So- we don't think we can assume that Trans-Mutate is nonbinary unless it says so, or the retcon text says so ala AVP or the intent behind the retcon text was such (see conversation about the nonbinary category on the community portal for this). As much as we would love to be able to say that ES Frenzy or IDW2 Arcee or RotB Nightbird are nonbinary or trans gals respectively or that all the Maltobots are actually gender expansive since they weren't assigned gender either really they kinda chose it/figured it out in a gestalt we do not have definitive statements in those prior regards yet that we are aware of and the Maltobots' case we are still thinking about this but we feel that we have to wait to see if they do more with gender in the show (they most certainly will) before we feel comfortable making an edit in that regard because it's so new and it was all but said rather than said bluntly, just as in a similar fashion IDW2 Arcee is a personality copy from the end of IDW1 Arcee's arc with some differences, similar design cues, sword and sniper rifle use, and in a gal gal relationship and raising a kid, everything more or less screams that she's a trans iteration to a reader like us but we don't have definitive confirmation in that regard (we dig a bit occasionally) yet. It's one of the things we would love to ask at a con if we ever had the chance to go to one where an IDW2 writer was in attendance. There is in fact a citogenesis situation we have to deal with but haven't due to a lack of spoons, and that is the assigning of genders/pronouns to toys that had no bios in recent years and weren't attached to specific media. Please if you want to help with that that would be great and we really appreciate your comments and thoughts a lot, if you want to message directly you can reach us on our tumblr @pluralsword or jump on the discord and look for a user with crabcee in the name on the tfwiki server. :3 Causeway (talk) 22:21, 3 May 2023 (EDT)
- Also it occurred to us you are asking for a gender style guide and we worry setting down hardset rules beyond discussions and the definitions in pages at the moment without context could unless carefully laid out lend itself to an overly category rigid interpretation and argumentation and gatekeeping that would not be truthful to the uniqueness of each character and their stories and we don't want that. We hope to sort this soonish in an indirect way by instead writing more stuff for the wiki, and we would be willing to lay out our thought process/go over stuff in the portal/share our accumulated knowledge regarding a pluralistic lens on gender/aesthetic autonomy (by pluralistic here we mean in the non-monopoly more than one way holistic philosophy sense not the multiplicity of selves sense). As we said though, you were already keen to much of the wisdom actually in play. :3Causeway (talk) 22:42, 3 May 2023 (EDT) Edited Causeway (talk) 21:15, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
- Realizing we don't actually know if ES Frenzy is a gal either, will look into that.Causeway (talk) 23:51, 3 May 2023 (EDT)
- Members of the show's staff, including Camacho, refer to Frenzy with female pronouns. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 00:37, 4 May 2023 (EDT)
- Just so everyone can follow discussion that happened on discord we once again reminded people that pronouns do not signify gender and there are things (like the TTRPG) which we CANNOT take pronouns to equal a particular gender according to the writers but we're gonna do Earthspark and other things still as if assuming that's the case until told otherwise because lowest common denominator still. This is why we haven't been editing recently been kind of depressed about it, but have managed to find reason to work on things.guess we'll have to post this on the frenzy page too Causeway (talk) 21:10, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
- Members of the show's staff, including Camacho, refer to Frenzy with female pronouns. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 00:37, 4 May 2023 (EDT)
- Realizing we don't actually know if ES Frenzy is a gal either, will look into that.Causeway (talk) 23:51, 3 May 2023 (EDT)
An important thing to keep in mind with regards to coverage is the cultural context in which media was made. Transmutate the episode was written in the late 90s by a cisgender woman and directed by three cisgender men. Without specific fiction stating Transmutate’s gender as nonbinary, to do so would be to imply a certain degree of intent and social awareness that was certainly not there. Even in the text itself, the word “it” is never used by Transmutate, but by the other characters, who as Thylacine mentioned do not see Transmutate as a fully sapient person. Even Silverbolt and Rampage see Transmutate under the assumption that it proves their respective philosophies true. To assign Transmutate the nonbinary category on the basis of a read of the episode of Beast Wars and nothing else would run the risk of celebrating hard work that doesn’t exist, and also diminishes the hard work and thoughtfulness of later creatives who have introduced textually nonbinary characters like Nightshade. It’s great to see people identifying with Transmutate but I’m really quite skeptical of arbitrarily assigning characters attributes based on literary analysis. We can still treasure what these characters mean to us while also being realistic about the world they were written in.Star Spangled Sam (talk) 04:17, 4 May 2023 (EDT)
- Yeah, I think the fact that Trans-Mutate is being referred to as "it" because no-one else sees it/her as an autonomous person outweights any and all after-the-fact readings of it as a status of being non-binary. It's both treating an interpretation of the episode as fact, and could come off as celebrating something that people can easily be taken to be demeaning, given the cultural context of the episode's creation. (being referred to as an /it/ is not a positive thing for many people!) AkibaSilver (talk) 09:08, 4 May 2023 (EDT)
Alliance
[edit]Isn't Transmutate technically a Maximal? (Her faction was never subverted by the Predacons, which should make her Maximal by default).Darktruth 16:35, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Even though this was mentioned 5 years ago, I second that notion. "Her" pregramming, while severely damaged, was never tampered with by the Predacons. So....nominally "she" should still be a Maximal. --Lord of Torment 01:19, 15 March 2013 (EDT)
Although, couldn't there be the possibility that that programming and hardware responsible for "her" faction, could have been damaged? Sort of like Tigertron. -- Maximus Prime Toa of Earth (talk) 13:17, 26 September 2016 (EDT)
Artwork
[edit]So apparently the artist who drew the comic cover for Hasbro Transformers Collectors' Club issue 55 has posted said artwork of the cover onto their DeviantArt account. Would this be alright to post onto the TF Wiki? It is official artwork for the comics, and i think it would be nice having a new, up to date, default character artwork for the profile.
Ixbran (talk) 06:36, 31 March 2015 (EDT)
- The policy for main images is that they're of the first well-known depiction, so the show version of Transmutate will remain at the top. Saix (talk) 14:10, 26 September 2016 (EDT)
Powers
[edit]So in Beast Wars: Uprising, there is much talk of her "powers", but what powers does she have exactly? What power is it that is so terrifying?
Gold Plastic Syndrome Evidence
[edit]Where was this reported? So I'm looking at mine, and it's flat gray plastic that's been painted over, not even swirly metallic plastic, and it hasn't shown any signs of cracking anywhere for years. I'm curious if this is just an assumption based on how thin the torso plastic is or if people are crunching in when pegging the other body parts on. This sounds like the Armada Prime arms assumption, where someone thinks it's GPS just because it LOOKS metallic, despite what the actual case may be.MCRG (talk) 10:49, 27 August 2021 (EDT)
- Someone I know has been through about 4 of them because they keep crumbling to dust, even when it hasn't been touched in several years and has just sat on the shelf. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 13:00, 27 August 2021 (EDT)
- That isn't GPS, especially if this doesn't have any of the right type of GP on it. It might be the full body made of soft rubbery plastic rotting away like G1 Shockwave's arm hose. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 13:06, 27 August 2021 (EDT)
- And we need sources beyond "someone I know". Saix (talk) 13:07, 27 August 2021 (EDT)
- I haven't seen it brought up in reviews or anything of late, especially when people are pulling it out to make comparisons to the Fossilizer one. Again, it has no gold plastic, that's all just paint, and the only part that's hard ABS plastic is the upper body, which on mine (I specify in case there was a running change or something), is not cast in metallic plastic, just regular flat gray plastic. I'm really inclined to take that line out unless it gets corroborated.MCRG (talk) 13:57, 3 September 2021 (EDT)
- It's already been removed. Just a reminder that GPS isn't exclusive to metallic-swirly plastic. BWII Bigmos's plain turquoise plastic and TM2 Megatron's brown plastic shatter just as badly and they don't feature a metallic swirl at all. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 20:38, 3 September 2021 (EDT)
- I haven't seen it brought up in reviews or anything of late, especially when people are pulling it out to make comparisons to the Fossilizer one. Again, it has no gold plastic, that's all just paint, and the only part that's hard ABS plastic is the upper body, which on mine (I specify in case there was a running change or something), is not cast in metallic plastic, just regular flat gray plastic. I'm really inclined to take that line out unless it gets corroborated.MCRG (talk) 13:57, 3 September 2021 (EDT)
- And we need sources beyond "someone I know". Saix (talk) 13:07, 27 August 2021 (EDT)
- That isn't GPS, especially if this doesn't have any of the right type of GP on it. It might be the full body made of soft rubbery plastic rotting away like G1 Shockwave's arm hose. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 13:06, 27 August 2021 (EDT)